How to Understand God's key important word in the Old Testament, HESED?

 

The Understanding of the meaning of the word

Hesed

 

Psalm 90:14 O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

One of the most fascinating words in the Bible is the word hesed. It is one of the dominant OT words for how God deals with us, and without question the most frequently praised attribute of God: “for his hesed endures forever!” Dr. Terry Rude, my first year Hebrew prof., defined it as God’s ‘loyal lovingkindness.’ Of its ± 248 occurrences, the KJV translates it mercy 149x, the NASB – lovingkindness 176x, the NIV – love, ESV – steadfast love, NET Bible – loyal love, NLT – faithful love.

As Dr. John Oswalt said in his Aldersgate Forum lectures on holiness last week: this is a very difficult word to translate. In fact, four Ph.D. dissertations in the last century were dedicated to determining the meaning(s) of this word.

I would like in this summary to look at the word hesed from two aspects:

1-    The concept of Hesed.

2-    Hesed and the nature of God.

 

1-    The Concept of Hesed:

The translation of hesed is problematic. In the Septuagint it is most frequently translated with the Greek word eleos, which mean “mercy”. For this reason the KJV most commonly translates hesed with “mercy”. Now, there is no question that mercy is one component of hesed, but when you have said “mercy” you have not begun to exhaust the richness and the fullness of what the Scripture wants to communicate when it uses this term. Thomas Torrance, a Scottish theologian at the University of Edinburgh, has said that this word hesed

the great sacramental word of the Old Testament.

One of the most typical contexts in which hesed occurs is covenant. We can get a feel for the word if we trace its occurrences. In the book of Genesis. The first one is in 19:19. If you remember, this is the chapter that tells about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Verse

15 discusses the interaction between Lot and the angels who are the messengers of God sent to save the righteous in the city of Sodom. Lot was hesitating, and so they said to him, "Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished." When Lot continued to hesitate, the messengers grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and his two daughters, and they led them safely out of the city. "For the Lord [Yahweh] was merciful to them" (16). As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, "Flee for your lives! Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Flee

to the mountains or you will be swept away!" (17). But Lot wanted to equivocate. He was afraid. "No, my lords, please!" (18). "Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness [hesed] to me in sparing my life" (19). While the NIV there translates it as "kindness," the NASB has "lovingkindness," and the KJV has "mercy." The fact of those multiple translations begins to give us a sense of just how rich the single Hebrew word is. Here we get the basic idea of the word. Lot knows that God has been much better to him than he ever deserved in getting him out of the city. What did God owe Lot? Nothing. Yet! He went out of His way to be sure that Lot and his family did not suffer with the other inhabitants of the cities.

And you can go in different verses to find different deepness in the concept however, we cannot do that here as we do not have the space to do that. So, we go to the second point,

 

2-    Hesed and the nature of God:

One of the common things that we describe God within Christianity is that God is Love. For us, love is primarily, and almost exclusively, a word about feelings. But the main truth about God is not that He feels in certain ways. The main truth about God is that He is certain things, as revealed in how He acts. That is what is so significant about hosed It is not about a way of feeling; it is about a way of acting. And when we discover that this is the way He always acts, that tells us about who He is.

In Psalm 62, the psalmist says, "Strength belongs to Elohim; hesed to you, O Yahweh." Hebrew poetic parallelism would indicate that hesed is here being seen as somehow synonymous with "strength." However, it is enough to say that God's reliability or constancy is the equivalent idea. The same would be true of 144:2: "He is my loving God [my hesed] and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge." Because of God's absolute reliability, He is a secure hiding place and shelter.

This fundamental idea of reliability is supported by the frequent linkage of hesed with the Hebrew word 'emet, which is the word for "truth." As we said in the previous lecture, they almost form a hendiadys. So when you speak of truth in relation to Yahweh, besed is not far away. And when you speak of hesed with Yahweh, truth is not far away. In this respect, it is important that we understand the sense of "truth" in the Old Testament. It is not normally speaking of what we in the West call "objective truth," that is; something you believe. More frequently, it is talking about something you are and do. If you are "true" in the Bible, then what you do and say is completely reliable. Moreover, you are reliable.

So, you find that the word is used not just to speak of His attitude and His nature, but it is used to describe His mighty works. This, I believe, is why the term besed occurs most frequently in the Bible in the book of Psalms. Out of a total of 247 occurrences more than 150 are found in the Psalms. Now what are the Psalms about? They are about worship, about prayer, about the Israelites communion with Yahweh. They are talking with Him, and they are reminding Him and thanking Him, and praising Him for the relationship. And what is at the heart of the relationship? It is hesed. Without the hesed of God, there would be no relationship. There would not have been one in the beginning, and there most certainly would not have been one in the end. Thus, the praise of God in the Bible is rooted in His hesed. Nowhere is that made more explicit than in Psalm 136, whose twenty-six verses constitute a brief review of the Creation, the Exodus, and the Conquest. Every one of the twenty-six verses ends with the refrain, "His hesed endures forever," In other words, both the world and Israel exist, creation and redemption, for one reason: the eternal hesed of God.